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"Small towns."

"Small towns with big mouths."

"Those who judge should look at themselves first," I remind him.

He takes a bite, chews it slower than the comment deserves, like he's deciding how much he actually wants to say. "Who said I was judging. Anyone I know?"

"Not sure." I take a bite of the ham sandwich, barely tasting it.

"What's her name?"

I grunt and say with my mouth full, "Starts with a K. I don't know."

He whistles. "That good, huh?"

I shrug and take a swig of water. "Nothing to write home about."

He studies me a second, his face turning more serious than his usual needling. "You know this isn't you, right? The old you would've at least seemed like he was having fun doing it."

I don't have a good answer for that, mostly because he's not wrong. There's nothing worse than getting called out by Mason of all people. He's spent the better part of a decade sleeping with whoever caught his attention. "I'm fine."

"You keep saying that. Doesn't make it true any more than it did this entire year." He balls up his sandwich wrapper and pockets it.

"I'm fine. Change the topic," I order.

He blurts out, "It was one girl. Let her go, bro."

"Mason, shut the fuck up," I grumble and toss my water bottle in the back of his truck.

"Just trying to get you out of this depressed funk," he claims.

"I didn't ask for help, so back off," I warn.

"Fine. But you're a man trying to drown something that knows how to swim."

I don't answer that, because there isn't a version of the truth I'm ready to hand him, not standing in the cold with a sandwich going stale in my hand and my whole chest racing just like it does every time I think of Lainey.

Mason doesn't push it further, which is its own kind of mercy, and we finish out the morning in a silence that isn't entirely comfortable but isn't hostile either. By the time dinner arrives, I haven't thought of Lainey in a few hours.

Mom corners me at supper, telling me to "Wait a minute." Once everyone's left the table and Dad's gone out to check on a heifer that's close to calving, she sits in the chair next to me. It's typical of her. Ruby Cartwright never once picked a fight in front of an audience if she could help it.

She starts, "You're too thin."

"I'm the same as I've always been."

"You're not, and don't argue with your mother about her own eyes." She heaps a ladle of mashed potatoes on my plate, twice what I'd have served myself. She turns in her chair, studying me the way she used to when I was sixteen and she knew I was lying about where I'd been. "I heard about the girl from the bar last week. And the one before her."

I groan. "Mom."

"We live in a small town. Rumors fly," she reminds me.

"Yeah. Just like they thought I was marrying Phoebe?" I arch my eyebrows at her.

Her lips twitch. "That one even surprised me."

I grunt.

"Look, I raised three boys who all went through a phase of thinking a warm body solved a cold problem." She reaches over and pats my hand, gentle in a way that undoes me faster than Mason's bluntness ever could. "But you've been carrying something around since New Year's, and I don't think it's got a thing to do with any woman you've met since then."